


time is priceless (but it’s free)

by plinys



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: 5 Times, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-22
Updated: 2017-02-22
Packaged: 2018-09-26 08:58:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9878306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: Five times Mick messed up his own timeline by time traveling, and that one time he still decided to go be a time traveler.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I basically made a post wondering if like teenage Mick remembers his time travel stuff for season one and then starts to notice other things just not going right?? Like seeing the statue of himself in DC, and so I wrote this.
> 
>  
> 
> Thank to doctorlightwood on tumblr for the beta!

1

Mick Rory’s nineteen and he’s enough of this time travel bullshit. 

He says as much to Len.

To Len, who is currently watching Star Trek on the crappy TV in their latest safe house.  

To Len, who has no fucking idea what he just said during the commercial break and what it means in the grand scheme of things. 

He’s just sitting there, watching his show - with an episode about  _ time travel  _ because of course Mick’s life is going to end up as some terrible science fiction show, why is he even surprised?

See the thing is Mick has seen a lot of shit in his day. 

Nineteen years old and he’s  _ seen some shit _ .

The type of shit that his therapist's back in juvie had been quick to write off as associations with trauma associated with the fire. Hallucinations. Coping mechanisms. 

And maybe if Mick was as dumb as he sometimes liked to pretend to be - after all, nobody even expected much of him so why bother - he would have been willing to accept it all, but he knew better. 

He even tried.

Tried to pretend it was nothing more than a dream.

That he hadn’t been stolen away from the fire, put on a  _ timeship _ , dropped off with a strange old British woman with a blondie and a bunch of babies, then days later - put back into his life like he was just supposed to accept everything that had happened.

He was just supposed to go on with his life.

And no, Mick couldn’t do that, because he wasn’t dumb.

That man hadn’t just sounded like his father, he’d looked like him, but he’d known things - Things Mick had only just begun to tell himself. 

It’s only once he’s sitting there watching Len’s TV show with him, that it all really clicks, good and proper, and then Len has to go say it like it’s nothing. 

“I want us to be partners, not just like this, though this is great-” He had looked coyly over his shoulder at that, and fuck - Len was technically jailbait it wasn’t fair. “Criminal partners, you and I against the whole damn world, sounds good right?”

And then the show had come back.

And the captain had said time travel.

And Mick had remembered the baby. 

_ Future criminal partner _ . 

“Fucking time travel,” Mick mutters again. 

Len shoots him a curious look, tearing his gaze away from his precious show one more time. “Stop whining. The episode’s almost over.” 

If only that was the whole problem. 

Of course, Mick can’t tell him the whole problem so he lets out a huff, reaching into his pocket to grab his lighter. To keep himself grounded, and in the present not - 

“Yeah sure, that’s what you said last time.” 

  
  


2

“It reminded me of you.” 

This would normally be a romantic sentiment.

The last time Len had stolen some art that reminded him of Mick that’d had sex underneath the painting for what felt like hours. It had been some abstract thing with red tones like fire and Mick didn’t know shit about art but Len had been proud of the heist and high on adrenaline and Mick did know something about that at least.

He’s twenty-five with a healthy libido and a very attractive  _ partner _ , who could blame him.

This piece was probably supposed to inspire a similar sort of feeling.

It’s a French piece, a portrait, early 18th century. 

It’s nice.

Mick still knows nothing about art, but it’s got a fancy frame and Len looks damn proud of himself so it’s got to be something good.

The only problem is - it’s him. 

The other him.

The older time traveling him who apparently went to France in the 18th century and got a portrait painted, which would later be discovered by art historians and labeled  _ unnamed nobleman _ .

More like  _ unnamed time traveling arsonist _ .

“You don’t like it,” Len says, his voice holding the smallest note of uncertainty, and shit - that’s  not right. Len’s never supposed to feel bad about this sort thing. 

“No it’s,” Mick’s throat is still dry, because the real answer is something he can’t drag Len into, not just yet. 

There’d be time for that eventually he was sure. 

Ha. Time. 

“You know, I don’t get art,” Mick says, “I just don’t see it is all.” 

Len still looks uncertain.

He knows Mick’s lying. 

They’ve both known each other’s tells for too long. 

When Len drapes a the white cloth back over the artwork, like it’s nothing, Mick doesn’t try hard enough to hide his look of relief. 

And Len’s shoulders loosen up a second later, as he plasters on the fake cocky grin that Mick has to try hard to pretend he doesn’t know is fake - “Figure it’ll sell for a nice price, we can take a trip after. How’s Rome sound?”

  
  


3

“Traitor!”

Not the first time someone has yelled as much at Mick, but fuck - he is tired of this.

_ This _ specifically.

Men (and women) in sci-fi suits with ray guns chasing after him and calling him a traitor. It’s not even the first time that this had happened, at this point it was the fifth? Maybe sixth? 

There’d been one time while he was drunk, where he could have sworn it was a spaceman but it might have just been on the Santini men coming to pay him back for that warehouse fire. 

It was still all a bit fuzzy.

What, however, was not fuzzy was the man currently calling Mick a traitor and pointing his space age gun all up in Mick’s face like it was going to make any damn difference. 

The only difference that any of this made was the fact that Lisa was standing right next to him, her lips still sealed around the milkshake he’d bought her to make up for the fact that Len canceled on their sibling bonding lunch hour to plan his next heist. 

“Mickey-”

“Don’t ask,” he tells her, before shooting getting back to the matter at hand. He’s got a prepared speech that has never worked before, but he tries for the short version. “The person you’re mad at is not me, I just have one of those faces, I swear-”

“Kronos, prepare to face judgment.”

“Why do I even bother?” 

“Mickey!”

“Give me ten seconds, and I’ll take care of this asshole,” he tells Lisa pointedly. Because she’s not supposed to be involved in this. Because she’s Len’s baby sister who wants to get involved in crime but really should just keep her nose clean and keep with the ice skating thing not - 

Not shoot people. 

Not shoot people who are time traveling to kill  _ him _ .

“What the fuck, Lise?”

“You taught me how to shoot,” she says, like that’s the problem here.

Which it kind of is. 

But more importantly it’s - 

“Alright, time for lesson number two, dumping the body.” 

Lisa just scoffs, stealing his milkshake out of his hands, because hers ended up on the ground when she’d pulled her gun out, “I’m nineteen, not a child. I know how to dump a body.”

  
  


4

There’s a girl on the television screen, a picture of a young woman with blonde hair and blue eyes, and -

A young girl that’s dead. 

At least that’s what the reports are saying, some Starling City moneybags, a ship lost at sea. 

“Sara Lance,” he knows the name before the television reporter says in minutes later.

Len, who hadn’t been paying much attention to the television, looks up from his blueprints spread all over the table. He’s got his glasses on and while normally Len with his glasses on in planning mode is enough to distract Mick from anything else at hand right now it’s hard to be distracted. 

“You know her,” Len asks.

It’s not so much a question.

Mick shrugs. 

It’s not so much an answer. 

“Met her once in England.” 

Well, that wasn’t entirely a lie. He thinks they were in England, everyone had those London accents, so it had to have been. 

Len’s eyes squint behind his glasses. 

Then with his usual dry tone he says, “Sorry for your loss,” before going back to his blueprints. 

About what Mick had expected, there was only one way to get Len out of planning mode and reminiscing over girl’s Mick had met with  _ time traveling  _ wasn’t going to do it. 

He should probably drink a beer in her honor. 

To the girl who had slapped him across the face without holding back. 

To the girl who had taken absolutely no shit from anyone and figured it all out before him.

To the girl who had crawled up into his bed to talk about running away from future England and stealing a bunch of babies.

To the woman who had surely been some future version of the girl, traveling alongside him. 

“She’s not dead,” Mick says, because he knows this with certainty. The woman he’d seen looked older than the picture on screen. “I’d be willing to bet on it.” 

Well, there were two things that could get Len to break out of planning mode.

Sex and money.

“How much?”  

  
  
  


5

He’s in DC, because he couldn’t stick around the Twin Cities, not when he and Len weren’t talking to each other. Not when he’d been left behind handcuffed to a hospital bed with his partner -

No.

He’s not dwelling on that.

He’s here on vacation.

Because everyone knows the best place to see the Fourth of July fireworks is in Washington DC and Mick knows what he’s about. 

Or at least he thought he did. 

“Fuck me.”

He’s drunk.

Drunk enough that at first he thought he has is that it has to be a mistake.

He should have known better.

Fucking future him fucking time traveling and fucking up everything. 

Or in this case maybe not fucking up because according to the sign  _ Private Rory  _ saved George Washington’s life after he was captured by the British, through a series of pyrotechnics. 

Time traveling pyromaniacs apparently did good for themselves. 

Himself. 

_ Himselves _ .

Before Mick can dwell on it anymore, the fireworks start over head, a burst of red and white and blue light and any thoughts he might have had about his future self meddling with the past are pushed to the back of his mind.

  
  
  


+1

Len had no idea what he’s asking.

If he did he would already know Mick’s answer.

Time travel.

Fucking time travel. 

“I have no desire to save the world, especially a hundred years after I’m dead.”

 


End file.
